^ 


^^' 


A'-^' 

^ 


€« 


jIVi 


CI)e  KitiersiHe  SEpIift  Tories 


WHY  I   BELIEVE  IN   POVERTY.     By  Ed- 
ward BOK. 
THE  AMATEUR  SPIRIT.  By  Bliss  Perrv. 

THE  GLORY  OF  THE    IMPERFECT.     By 

George  H.  Palmer. 
SELF-CULTIVATION    IN    ENGLISH.     By 

George  H.  Palmer. 

TRADES  AND  PROFESSIONS.  By  George 
H.  Palmer. 

THE    CULTIVATED    MAN.      By  Charles 
W.  Eliot. 

WHITHER?    Anonymous. 

CALM    YOURSELF.     By  George  L.  Wal- 
ton. 

Each,  50  cents,  net. 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
Boston  and  New  York 


WHY  I  BELIEVE  IN  POVERTY 


WHY    I    BELIEVE    IN 
POVERTY 

AS    THE    RICHEST    EXPERIENCE 
THAT  CAN  COME  TO  A  BOY 


BY 

EDWARD    BOK 


BOSTON  AND   NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN    COMPANY 

MDCCCCXV 


COPYRIGHT,   I91S,   BV  CURTIS  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT,    1915,    BY    EDWARD    DOK 

ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 

Published  October  iqis 


A   FOREWORD 

The  article  in  this  little  book  was 
published  in  The  Ladies'  Home  Jour- 
nal for  April,  1915.  Much  to  the 
surprise  of  the  author,  the  call  for 
copies  was  so  insistent  as  to  exhaust 
the  edition  of  the  magazine  contain- 
ing it.  As  the  demand  did  not  appear 
to  be  supplied,  the  article  is  now  re- 
printed in  this  form.  It  is  sent  out 
with  the  hope  of  the  author  that  it 
may  still  further  fulfill  its  mission  of 
giving  the  stimulant  of  encourage- 
ment wherever  it  is  needed. 

E.  B. 
October 
Nineteen  hundred  and  fifteen 


WHY  I   BELIEVE   IN  POVERTY 


WHY  I  BELIEVE  IN  POVERTY 

AS    THE    RICHEST    EXPERIENCE    THAT 
CAN    COME    TO    A    BOY 

I  MAKE  my  living  trying  to  edit  the 
"Ladies'  Home  Journal."  And  be- 
cause the  public  has  been  most  gener- 
ous in  its  acceptance  of  that  periodical, 
a  share  of  that  success  has  logically 
come  to  me.  Hence  a  number  of  my 
very  good  readers  cherish  an  opinion 
that  often  I  have  been  tempted  to 
correct,  a  temptation  to  which  I  now 
yield.  My  correspondents  express  the 
conviction  variously,  but  this  extract 
from  a  letter  is  a  fair  sample :  — 

3 


WHY   I  BELIEVE  IN  POVERTY 

It  is  all  very  easy  for  you  to  preach 
economy  to  us  when  you  do  not  know 
the  necessity  for  it :  to  tell  us  how,  as  for 
example  in  my  own  case,  we  must  live 
within  my  husband's  income  of  eight 
hundred  dollars  a  year,  when  you  have 
never  known  what  it  is  to  live  on  less 
than  thousands.  Has  it  ever  occurred 
to  you,  born  with  the  proverbial  silver 
spoon  in  your  mouth,  that  theoretical 
writing  is  pretty  cold  and  futile  com- 
pared to  the  actual  hand-to-mouth 
struggle  that  so  many  of  us  live,  day  by 
day  and  year  in  and  year  out  —  an  ex- 
perience that  you  know  not  of? 

"An  experience  that  you  know  not 
of"! 

Now,  how  far  do  the  facts  square 
with  this  statement? 

Whether  or  not  I  was  born  with  the 
4 


WHY  I  BELIEVE  IN  POVERTY 

proverbial  silver  spoon  in  my  mouth 
I  cannot  say.  It  is  true  that  I  was  born 
of  well-to-do  parents.  But  when  I  was 
six  years  old  my  father  lost  all  his 
means,  and  faced  life  at  forty-five,  in  a 
strange  country,  without  even  neces- 
saries. There  are  men  and  their  wives 
who  know  what  that  means :  for  a  man 
to  try  to  "come  back"  at  forty-five, 
and  in  a  strange  country! 

I  had  the  handicap  of  not  knowing 
one  word  of  the  English  language.  I 
went  to  a  public  school  and  learned 
what  I  could.  And  sparse  morsels  they 
were!  The  boys  were  cruel,  as  boys 
are.  The  teachers  were  impatient,  as 
tired  teachers  are. 

5 


WHY  I  BELIEVE  IN  POVERTY 

My  father  could  not  find  his  place  in 
the  world.  My  mother,  who  had  al- 
ways had  servants  at  her  beck  and  call, 
faced  the  problems  of  housekeeping 
that  she  had  never  learned  nor  been 
taught.    And  there  was  no  money. 

So,  after  school  hours,  my  brother 
and  I  went  home,  but  not  to  play.  Af- 
ter-school hours  meant  for  us  to  help 
a  mother  who  daily  grew  more  frail 
under  the  burdens  that  she  could  not 
carry.  Not  for  days,  but  for  years,  we 
two  boys  got  up  in  the  gray  cold  win- 
ter dawn  when  the  bed  feels  so  snug 
and  warm  to  growing  boys,  and  we 
sifted  the  cold  ashes  of  the  day-bef ore's 
fire  for  a  stray  lump  or  two  of  unburned 


WHY  I  BELIEVE  IN  POVERTY 

coal,  and  with  what  we  had  or  could 
find  we  made  the  fire  and  warmed  up 
the  room.  Then  we  set  the  table  for 
the  scant  breakfast,  went  to  school, 
and  directly  after  school  we  washed 
the  dishes,  swept  and  scrubbed  the 
floors.  Living  in  a  three-family  tene- 
ment, each  third  week  meant  that  we 
scrubbed  the  entire  three  flights  of 
stairs  from  the  third  story  to  the  first, 
as  well  as  the  doorsteps  and  the  side- 
walk outside.  The  latter  work  was  the 
hardest:  for  we  did  it  on  Saturdays 
with  the  boys  of  the  neighborhood 
looking  on  none  too  kindly,  or  we  did  it 
to  the  echo  of  the  crack  of  the  ball  and 
bat  on  the  adjoining  lot! 
7 


WHY  I  BELIEVE  IN  POVERTY 

In  the  evening,  when  other  boys 
could  sit  by  the  lamp  or  study  their 
lessons,  we  two  boys  went  out  with  a 
basket  and  picked  up  wood  and  coal 
in  the  neighboring  lots,  or  went  after 
the  dozen  or  so  pieces  of  coal  left  from 
the  ton  of  coal  put  in  that  afternoon 
by  one  of  our  neighbors,  with  the  spot 
hungrily  fixed  in  mind  by  one  of  us 
during  the  day,  hoping  that  the  man 
who  carried  in  the  coal  might  not  be 
too  careful  in  picking  up  the  stray 
lumps ! 

"An  experience  that  you  know  not 
of"!    Don't  I? 

At  ten  years  of  age  I  got  my  first 
job:  washing  the  windows  of  a  baker's 
8 


WHY  I  BELIEVE   IN  POVERTY 

shop  at  fifty  cents  a  week.  In  a  week 
or  two  I  was  allowed  to  sell  bread  and 
cakes  behind  the  counter  after  school 
hours  for  a  dollar  a  week  —  handing 
out  freshly  baked  cakes  and  warm,  de- 
licious smelling  bread,  when  scarcely 
a  crumb  had  passed  my  mouth  that 
day! 

Then  on  Saturday  mornings  I  served 
a  route  for  a  weekly  paper,  and  sold 
my  remaining  stock  on  the  street.  It 
meant  from  sixty  to  seventy  cents  for 
that  day's  work. 

I  lived  in  Brooklyn,  New  York,  and 

the  chief  means  of  transportation  to 

Coney  Island  at  that  time  was  the 

horse  car.    Near  where  we  lived  the 

9 


WHY  I  BELIEVE  IN  POVERTY 

cars  would  stop  to  water  the  horses, 
the  men  would  jump  out  and  get  a 
drink  of  water,  but  the  women  had  no 
means  of  quenching  their  thirst.  See- 
ing this  lack  I  got  a  pail,  filled  it  with 
water  and  a  bit  of  ice,  and,  with  a  glass, 
jumped  on  each  car  on  Saturday  after- 
noon and  all  day  Sunday,  and  sold  my 
wares  at  a  cent  a  glass.  And  when  com- 
petition came,  as  it  did  very  quickly 
when  other  boys  saw  that  a  Sunday's 
work  meant  two  or  three  dollars,  I 
squeezed  a  lemon  or  two  in  my  pail, 
my  liquid  became  "lemonade"  and 
my  price  two  cents  a  glass,  and  Sun- 
days meant  five  dollars  to  me. 
Then,  in  turn,  I  became  a  reporter 

10 


WHY  I  BELIEVE  IN  POVERTY 

during  the  evenings,  an  office  boy  day- 
times, and  learned  stenography  at  mid- 
night! 

My  correspondent  says  she  supports 
her  family  of  husband  and  child  on 
eight  hundred  dollars  a  year,  and  says 
I  have  never  known  what  that  means. 
I  supported  a  family  of  three  on  six 
dollars  and  twenty-five  cents  a  week 
—  less  than  one  half  of  her  yearly 
income.  When  my  brother  and  I, 
combined,  brought  in  eight  hundred 
dollars  a  year  we  felt  rich ! 

I  have  for  the  first  time  gone  into 
these  details  in  print  so  that  my  read- 
ers may  know,  at  first  hand,  that  the 
Editor  of  the  "Ladies'  Home  Journal" 
11 


WHY  I  BELIEVE  IN  PO\^RTY 

is  not  a  theorist  when  he  writes  or 
prints  articles  that  seek  to  preach 
economy  or  that  reflect  a  hand-to- 
hand  struggle  on  a  small  or  an  invisible 
income.  There  is  not  a  single  step,  not 
an  inch,  on  the  road  of  direst  poverty 
that  I  do  not  know  or  have  not  experi- 
enced. And,  having  experienced  every 
thought,  every  feeling,  and  every  hard- 
ship that  come  to  those  who  travel 
that  road,  I  say  to-day  that  I  rejoice 
with  every  boy  who  is  going  through 
the  same  experiences. 

Nor  am  I  discounting  or  forgetting 
one  single  pang  of  the  keen  hardships 
that  such  a  struggle  means.  I  would 
not  to-day  exchange  my  years  of  the 

12 


WHY  I  BELIEVE  IN  POVERTY 

keenest  hardship  that  a  boy  can  know 
or  pass  through  for  any  single  experi- 
ence that  could  have  come  to  me.  I 
know  what  it  means,  not  to  earn  a  dol- 
lar, but  to  earn  two  cents.  I  know  the 
value  of  money  as  I  could  have  learned 
it  or  known  it  in  no  other  way.  I  could 
have  been  trained  for  my  life-work  in 
no  surer  way.  I  could  not  have  ar- 
rived at  a  truer  understanding  of  what 
it  means  to  face  a  day  without  a  penny 
in  hand,  not  a  loaf  of  bread  in  the  cup- 
board, not  a  piece  of  kindling  wood  for 
the  fire — with  nothing  to  eat,  and  then 
be  a  boy  with  the  hunger  of  nine  and 
ten,  with  a  mother  frail  and  discour- 
aged! 

13 


WHY  I  BELIEVE  IN  POVERTY 

"An  experience  that  you  know  not 
of"!    Don't  I? 

And  yet  I  rejoice  in  the  experience, 
and  I  repeat:  I  envy  every  boy  who  is 
in  that  condition  and  going  through  it. 
But  —  and  here  is  the  pivot  of  my 
strong  beUef  in  poverty  as  an  undis- 
guised blessing  to  a  boy  —  I  beheve  in 
poverty  as  a  condition  to  experience,  to 
go  through,  and  then  to  get  out  of :  not 
as  a  condition  to  stay  in.  "That's  all 
very  well,"  some  will  say;  "easy 
enough  to  say,  but  how  can  you  get 
out  of  it?"  No  one  can  definitely  tell 
another  that.  No  one  told  me.  No  two 
persons  can  find  the  same  way  out. 
Each  must  find  his  way  for  himself. 
14 


WHY  I  BELIEVE  IN  POVERTY 

That  depends  on  the  boy.  I  was  de- 
temained  to  get  out  of  poverty  because 
my  mother  was  not  born  in  it,  could 
not  stand  it,  and  did  not  belong  in  it. 
This  gave  me  the  first  essential :  a  pur- 
pose. Then  I  backed  up  the  purpose 
with  effort  and  a  willingness  to  work, 
and  to  work  at  anything  that  came  my 
way,  no  matter  what  it  was,  so  long  as 
it  meant  "the  way  out."  I  did  not 
pick  and  choose :  I  took  what  came,  and 
did  it  in  the  best  way  I  knew  how;  and 
when  I  did  n't  like  what  I  was  doing  I 
still  did  it  well  while  I  was  doing  it, 
but  I  saw  to  it  that  I  did  n't  do  it  any 
longer  than  I  had  to  do  it.  I  used 
every  rung  in  the  ladder  as  a  rung  to 

15 


WHY  I  BELIEVE  IN  POVERTY 

the  one  above.  It  meant  effort,  of 
course,  untiring,  ceaseless,  and  unspar- 
ing, and  it  meant  work,  hard  as  nails. 
But  out  of  the  effort  and  the  work 
came  the  experience;  the  upbuilding; 
the  development ;  the  capacity  to  un- 
derstand and  sympathize;  the  greatest 
heritage  that  can  come  to  a  boy.  And 
nothing  in  the  world  can  give  that  to  a 
boy,  so  that  it  will  burn  into  him,  as 
will  poverty. 

That  is  why  I  believe  so  strongly  in 
poverty,  the  greatest  blessing  in  the 
way  of  the  deepest  and  fullest  experi- 
ence that  can  come  to  a  boy.  But,  as  I 
repeat:  always  as  a  condition  to  work 
out  of,  not  to  stay  in. 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .   A 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000  785  287    4 


,lj,(.. 


:^M^m''^> 


■i^i. 


